Sharing my drama: After much reading, I finally decided that I should try to clean this Claudius Gothicus - Annona Antoninianus (RIC V Claudius Gothicus 18) using an overnight soak in Sodium Thiosulphate (2 g in 50 cc of warm water). Before: one could only guess what is on the reverse well, the dark "something" came off but unfortunately below was just the bare copper. I think the coin had some sort of dark-creamy something, applied to hide what was below. It looked like shoe cream. After: I was in shock and feeling very guilty, even though it is a very common coin one can easily get, well so I thought, but .... Came up with a plan: step 1: look for one. Of course didn't find one in the US; yes, ma-shops has it (~$29), but even if I really want to replace it, I won't buy overseas.. step 2: look for other Claudius II coins available, and of course as it happens, currently there are not many offered. step 3: look for one that you like. Did find not only one, but two and they are already on their way to me: Ӕ Billon Tetradrachm, Alexandria, Egypt, RY 2 = 269-270 AD Emmett 3893.2; Köln 3045; Dattari (Savio) 5407; K&G 104.32; Milne 4252 20 x 22 mm, 10.8 g Ob.: AΥT K KΛAΥΔIOC CЄB Laureate, draped and cuirassed bust right. Rev.: Poseidon standing left, right foot resting on dolphin, holding torch (variously described as grain ear, sword, ship's ram, aphlaston) in r. hand and trident in l.; across fields regnal year LB Sellers' picture: and Antoninianus, Antioch, 268 - 270 AD 19 x 21 mm, 4.1 g RIC V Antioch 213 Ob.: IMP C CLAVDIVS AVG; radiate and draped bust r. Rev.: IVVENTVS AVG Hercules standing facing, head left, holding club set on ground in r. hand and apple or globe in l.hand, lion-skin draped over left arm, in ex. Δ yes, I learned my lesson.... maybe someday soon I can find one with Annona Please share your experience with good and bad cleaning outcomes
Copper coins are much easier to tone than the silver ones, just put some onions and garlic along with that coin a paper bag and stash away for couple of days. With silver, I found the aluminium foil with hot water/sodium bicarb to be more effective, I cleaned this Chola coin with this method, and you be the judge.
Looks like you managed to turn a disaster into an unexpected win, @cmezner! That tet you have makes me wonder if perhaps I should start cleaning coins as well! I like the portrait and love the reverse. FWIW, you shouldn't feel bad about cleaning the Annona; it was ruined well before it got to you. I've never cleaned a coin yet, but a few days ago I did notice an outbreak of BD on this Augustus restitution as. Really bad news and a sad first for me. So, for the first time, I'm trying my hand at fighting an outbreak. Bought distilled water and toothpicks. Rinse, repeat and hope for the best. Here it is before: The green on the obverse seems stable and is probably just patina. The innocent- looking green spot above the S on the reverse, however, is a totally different story. Like I said, I've never fought BD before, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I like the portrait...
@cmezner Why did you use thiosulphate ? I cant see any trace of horned silver or encrusted deposist. Max time with the solution is 30 minutes. Cleaning job on this Nero/Claudius drachm:
I have cleaned quite a few coins and find that sometimes the detail is all in the top layer of dirt or crust. Here is an example that I couldn't clean at all because if you take off the layer of crust you take off the detail. This is Constantius II Mint Mark TES Epsilon.
I was trying to use what I found here: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/philip-and-philip-ii-antoninianus-cleaned.372695/ where @hotwheelsearl was sharing what happened with a Philip I ant -> "After an overnight soak in Sodium Thiosulfate". I thought that below the black something there would be some silvering - well, there wasn't as @Ignoramus Maximus said
Being not good at cleaning coins I don't even try.... ... but you gave me an idea : buying an ugly/worn/already destroyed coin, pretend to clean it....and get an excuse to buy two nice coins instead !!! Well done Lady ! Q
Glad my thread helped, although sorry to hear about your results... it works great on actual horn silver, though. I like long soaks for the really stubborn horn. 30 minutes is too short for me.
The black something was the silvering. Your misfortune is due to the rapid debasement of Roman coinage doing the twenty year period between the reigns of Philip I and Claudius II. The Philip coin, although heavily debased with copper, had a similar metal content throughout. The Claudius II had a more or less billon/bronze core with a thick silver wash. The silver wash oxidized, combined with other chemicals in its local environment, and formed that thick black crud. When you removed that, you exposed the billon core. So if, like me, you prefer to blame others for your own self-inflicted misfortunes, then you should probably blame Claudius Gothicus for screwing up the currency. It's not your fault. If Claudius II had just left the currency alone, your coin would have turned out just fine.
The late Roman debasement of the coinage was just one way of handling the fact faced by Rome then and our modern times today. The value of silver and other precious metals had increased to a point that it was impractical to use in coins for the daily use. The US, in 1964, took the other path by removing the silver from their 10 cent coin and making it out of a copper/nickel alloy that they figured people would accept as silver because it was silvery looking on the outside and, most importantly would be accepted in vending machines that used electric conductivity to reject fake coins. This did result in a strange situation where the five cent coin, made of a different alloy of the same metals was worth more in melt value than the ten cent coin but that did not bother the average coin user. The Romans between Gallienus and Aurelian discovered that some people cared how much actual silver was in the coins and some did not but the staff of the mints cared enough to be skimming silver and making coins worth less than advertised. Did Claudius II know his coins were less than the value of the previous ones or was he a victim of the crop of mintworkers that Aurelian eliminated in the Felicissimus revolt? I don't know. The 'experts' that know everything about ancient history don't either. Which is better? On one hand we say silver is worth so much that using it in a coin that will buy everyday things would make coins the size of those ancient Greek things that were easily lost OR to say your coinage has the amount of silver required by the purchasing power even though that assumes guys like Felicissimus are honest, hard working bureaucrats. The third choice, currently in fashion, is to tell people that money is based on trust in the system and the government so it makes no difference whatsoever whether the 'silver' coinage has any silver in it at all. After all, you people are trusting in the value of paper money, bank accounts or crypto-currency anyway so why sweat the small stuff? Claudius was an amateur or thought he had bigger things to worry about. Aurelian made a decision and straightened out things at the mint well enough that it was another generation before inflation required another coinage 'reform'. He could have told the Roman people that they had to accept any coin he issued and promoted Felicissimus to be Caesar for being so modern thinking that he saved wasting all that silver on the common people some of whom would not know the difference. Today, we who collect are amazed at the number of modern people who can not tell gold from brass and silver from pot metal. How is it that we modern folks can look down of the Romans who thought a coin worth a set amount needed to contain that amount of precious metal even if that amount was a speck? If we assume a silver dime is now $3 in value (roughly speaking) a spendable for 10 cent coin should be 1/30th of that. If we take the 2.27 gram 1964 dime weight and divide by 30, we get 0.07g which would be about the same as the smallest Greek fractional silver coins. I know few of you use dimes for purchases so lets talk about quarters. Below is a small coin in that general range. Would you like to use it at Aldi's grocery store to set free a shopping cart? What is it I can actually buy for a quarter? I forget.
Thank you for all your thorough explanations, I do appreciate them very much. Always learning I am not blaming anybody for ruining the ant, and it's not a misfortune. On the contrary, if I wouldn't have ruined it, I wouldn't have looked for a replacement. It's a win-win: Now I have two that please me very much and I learned something.
